


Blood Moon

by pouralittle



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018), The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Angst, Crain Story Continuation, Hill House, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Original Character(s), POV Multiple, Possible Character Death, Sibling Love, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pouralittle/pseuds/pouralittle
Summary: It's been two years since the events of Hill House, and still, the Crain siblings don't sleep. Not really. Moving on isn't so easy when trauma lies so deep in the veins.





	1. Sackcloth and Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of the Crain's story. Nothing surprising there.

THEO’S P.O.V

 

 

It’s the blood moon… and she can’t stop staring from behind the pane of the frosted window. Her fingertips pressing on the glass, firm and hard. She watches intently; the pooling red of a deep, bottomless wound. The pulse and spill of rich crimson, seeping through a blanket of thick black.

And in its presence, the night sky is a sob, heaving with fallen stars astray on the face of grief; they are shattered pieces meeting the net of the horizon. The sling of ache. She feels it tenfold, the anguish, come unfocused like the directionless flow of a river. Lost and without origin, coming and going, just as it pleases.

 

She jolts back -- breaks contact with the painting Luke holds out for her to see. Theo sees too much.

 

She gently cradles her hand to her chest, and also brings it to her eyes to cover, to vanquish the terrifying memory. But really, it’s her skin, she realises, that remembers most -- and that, she cannot erase.

 

“Are you okay?” Luke says. He has abandoned his artwork on the bed, and come to her side rather aversely. Cautious, he holds onto the sleeve of her parker. Theo’s body is stiff, and paralysed.

 

It’s times like this, when she is reminded of – despite all her control – her inability to withstand or resist the pull of her sibling’s emotions especially, that Theo wishes she hadn’t thrown away her gloves.

 

“Are you?” She asks, tears in her eyes.

 

Luke softens a little. “You could feel all… what I felt?”

 

Theo steps away from him, and walks toward his window. Gingerly, she pulls across the curtains to open the night sky; a glowing hologram in Luke’s apartment. She pointedly hovers her hand over the glass pane of where he had touched it, almost feeling still, the warmth of his fingerprints.

 

“I’m sorry.” He says.

 

“We’re all in pain.” She reminds.

 

Turning around, Theo catches the tremble at his lip. She blinks away her tears quickly. “I just wish these beautiful works you do, didn’t have to come from such dark places.”

 

“I’m inspired by them.” He reveals. “Sometimes, it’s – it’s…so moving to – “ Luke stops himself abruptly.

 

“I know.” She says.

 

Theo sits on the edge of his bed, awkward, and gazes at the painting a second time. She shuts her eyes to think of something else, but…

 

“You don’t need to hide those parts from me, Luke. I-I…”

 

A flashback of her six-year-old younger brother hunching over drawings silences her; his crayons and wet paint puddles scattered on hill house’s floorboards -- these unorthodox colours pooling into a fierce, angry mess of grey. The frantic illustration of what he cannot say, the screaming voice that will not be heard.

 

“Thanks, Theo.” Luke proffers.

 

… but not yet. She will not accept his full appreciation.

 

Theo forcefully picks up the artwork Luke calls Blood Moon. He tries to stop her, but she is firm in her grip, and she allows the jumping emotions to enter her once again; the sheer terror and sorrow. Unrelenting, Theo feels the unashamed stillness in Luke’s frenzy; the coursing of hot and cold in her weeping veins -- and her body involuntarily shakes, and trembles. She sobs.

Suddenly, she is the night sky, and wrapping herself securely around the red abyss that is Nelly. The fallen stars are skimming down her arms, leaving papercuts, and pin-pricks of unchecked sorrow. Dad’s embrace, her body comes to register, is somehow the horizon to temper the flight, to show her the ground. As if to grant her -- she will float down; she will walk again.

And even though, Theo is bleeding. Even though her skin is stinging, and her feet are flailing mid-air to find the ground, the weightlessness of being suspended – unanchored -- is not absolutely terrifying.

 

When she finally removes her hand from the canvas, and the grief fades away but the ache remains, she, very briefly, no longer believes she’ll need gloves again.

 

“Moving.” She affirms.

 

The panic that was on Luke’s face, gradually dissipates into a soft, unsure smile.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Oh yeah.” She hears her mother’s voice in her words then, and the touch of Nell’s wonderment that same day she discovered the word ‘puffalope’. It’s sensible. It makes sense.

 

 

…

 

LUKE’S P.O.V

 

 

Luke opens the door to Theo’s Jeep. It smells like his sister, he thinks languidly; a dry martini, shaken not stirred, gin and lemon twist. Never simple. Never straightforward. He half expects to find bottles of alcohol propped in the cup holders, but as he slides into the driver’s seat, he realises that the vehicle is spotless, and she isn’t an addict.

 

Theo appears moments later. He watches as she descends the last of the steps as if she were fleeing down a fire escape, rushing the final few. She approaches the car with her head lowered, and her hands, unsurprisingly adorning gloves. Dare he say, she seems upset, wearing her apparent don’t-bother-me look.

 

Luke can tell from Theo’s hard exhale as she lowers herself into the passenger seat, that she has been drinking alone just prior. She has been helping herself to some glasses whilst he warmed up the car. And he was probably marginally aware of this when she had asked him to drive yesterday, but his opinion has been too compromised to have said anything. The years of drug abuse have seemingly silenced him.

 

“How did you sleep?” She asks, eyes averted.

 

Luke nods. Short and stiff. “Good.”

 

At the apparent dead end of their exchange, he starts the car, and shifts the gear stick into reverse.

 

Ostensibly, a slither of guilt catches up to her when they back out of their parking space, and she apologises. “I’m sorry… Were you waiting long?” Theo’s eyes are a ghostly blue. She looks at him, and he feels transparent. Sometimes, Luke gets the sense that Theo can feel even with her eyes.

 

Luke twists in his seat, but steers the car safely onto the main road. He finds himself remembering a time when Steve and Shirley had just left Aunt Janet’s for college. And Theo, despite being a few years off eighteen, had already packed all of her belongings too. She was always ahead. Always eager to move away at a moment’s notice.

 

“No.” He replies. “No.”

 

Theo stretches her legs out underneath the glovebox; they’re long and extending like his. Shuddering, she turns up the heat. “I’m going to call Trish, she’s probably wondering…”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She feels into her pockets and comes out with her phone. Delicately she pulls off her right glove, and Luke glances at her hand, which tremors. He worries a little, that maybe he put that there. Blood Moon.

 

“Trish.” Theo says into the phone.

 

Luke hears the indecipherable murmur of Trish’s voice, and witnesses the tension on Theo’s shoulders that rolls off as a result. His sister smiles. He smiles too.

 

“We’re on our way. Yeah, we’re okay – are you?”

 

Theo laughs, her body shaking in a good way. Wistfully, he wishes he could see this again on Nelly also. Only, his twin sister was a distinctly different happy; her laughs were a lot louder, and they were a lot more light. A gentle breeze against the skin.

 

Theo bites her cheeks, nodding her head close to her chest, a slow chuckle passing her lips from that deep place inside; the secret vault of a person’s happiness, reserved only for a few. Apparently, he is not privy. Not like Trish is.

 

“We’ll pick you up soon. I love you.” Theo ends the call.

 

Hearing her tentative display of affection, Luke plasters a mildly amused expression onto his face, and she turns to catch it.

 

“I know you think I don’t share my feelings… ever… but I do.”

 

He lifts his shoulders with a chuckle, shrugging. “Do you love me too?”

 

Theo pulls her glove back onto her right hand patiently, with some time to spare. Eyes on her lap, she seemingly yields to his demand. “Yes. I love you too.”

 

Luke resists the urge to ruffle her hair, and she knocks him roughly on the side of his arm as if realising this from the quiet of her isolation. It’s friendly, affable.

 

They pass a sign reading Amherst.

 

God, he isn’t afraid for once.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be more intense as the main arc of the story picks up, and some life-altering revelations come to fruition. And no, I don't think I'm being dramatic :p


	2. Resist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nell's here again... to break our hearts yet another time. As if once isn't enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets a bit emotional.

_Resist..._

 

...

 

TRISH’S P.O.V

 

 

Trish hugs Theo in the back. They fall against the car seats, foreheads almost touching.

  

Today, Trish can smell the vodka in Theo’s breath; the supposed ache that’s there. Somehow, she doesn’t think it’s because of Kevin’s mother’s unexpected passing. It’s something much more buried, more quiet. A hole so deep in the earth, it likely won’t resurface without cracking the world in half, and half again. She imagines doing this to Theo, cracking her into a million, tiny thousand pieces to finally discover the source of her turmoil, breaking her again and again into halves and quarters, and it frightens Trish. It frightens her so much, Trish knows she’d rather not find out. She’d rather not try to capture the malicious trauma there, and love it till better. She’d rather not.

 

“If I ask you to slow down, you’ll only speed up.”  Trish tells her, troubled by how easily Theo retreats down her rabbit hole.

 

“Another funeral.” Theo replies with that familiar conciseness and bluntness she often employs; a way of dissociating herself from bad news, Trish is sure. As though, brevity explains everything. “We’re already late, and Shirley will be mad.”

  

Trish notices the gloves on Theo’s hands then, and decides not to push it. Withdrawing a little, she kisses her wife-to-be on the head, and scooches over into her own seat by the window.  She buckles her seatbelt. Theo does too.

  

“Great.” Luke remarks, turning the ignition. He’s kind and gracious and perhaps, appearing a little ingenuine. Because in all likelihood, he’s got that hole too, tucked beneath the spider-silk feathers far far down, and so do the rest of the siblings. How warped and twisted, she thinks.

  

Luke’s wrist shakes as the engine sputters. His face is a picture of torment as he attempts to start Theo’s Jeep, and Trish finds herself wondering somewhat guiltily how she has allowed herself to be so involved in such a difficult, mysterious set of personal affairs. It’s not at all what she looks for in a person, and yet here she is anyway like she was on the first day, suddenly so taken by this tough, defiant façade of a woman -- stupidly okay with the idea of being given the cold shoulder once every short while. And admittedly, yes, she loves this veneer, almost as much as she loves the child Theo hidden behind the thick, brick walls. She loves them both, completely.

  

The engine abruptly coughs to life. The deathly frigid cold outside will do that to a person and supposedly, a car. Trish muses, then side-tracked in spite of herself, that **that** is the kind of thought Theo would have, but also, the kind of nightmare Theo would dream. Something cold. Something unfeeling. A dark, numbness.

 

Time moves quickly from then onward. Once they pull away from her apartment, no one seemingly has anything to say. Albeit, Trish wants to ask Luke about his recent Art classes, but there clearly isn’t an inclination for conversation when he decidedly turns up the radio. Eventually, she begins to notice instead, the striking resemblance between Luke and Theo; both are quiet, still sufferers. The eye of the storm.

 

 

…

 

NELLY’S P.O.V

 

 

She feels it when she’s sleeping in her mother’s embrace. A vision that roughens her awake. 

  

Nell pulls away from her mother, and glides to the window. She’s not as afraid of the house as she used to be. She senses that sometimes, she is just as ugly, deteriorated and scary, and, she is just as hungry.

 

As a living thing, she’d always wanted to curl away somewhere, retreat to an island maybe and just live alone with Arthur. She was satisfied with just that. She didn’t need a lot of people. She didn’t need great company. But now that she is a dead thing –- now that she is a ghost –- attention, she craves. One person isn’t enough, neither are two. Yes, she loves her parents, but one thing not mentioned when you stay at Hill House, is that you don’t feel fully dead, and you don’t feel fully alive. Even as a ghost herself, this very aspect haunts her. She is haunted still.

  

Mostly, she appoints, it’s the red room that beckons her, that makes her this way. It’s the red room she dreams of many nights. Whether it be in the comfort of her mother’s arms, or her fathers, she is restless in sleep. Ever since her siblings’ departure two days ago, it has been the one place she refuses to enter again, and yet she cannot ignore her intuition any longer. _Something is wrong._ Nell believes she must revisit beyond that red door once more. Nell believes there’s still yet another secret to discover.

 

So, Nell floats up the black spiral staircase, hesitant but brave all the same. She stops in the hallway to notice the door is shut. The floorboards, are glowing a fierce, angry red, and the walls are closing in. Whatever it is, the house does not want her to discover it, but she is not solid. She is not alive, and she is not fully dead. Importantly, Nell’s soul isn’t consumed. Not like her mother’s has been.  She approaches undeterred –- if anything increasingly resolute –- and her body falls through the dimensions; the layers of wood and stone. Until, she is within the red room.

 

It’s a nightmare, she encounters.

  

And behind…behind it all… a blood moon, framed by the back window.

  

She is reeling. Desolate.

 

When Nell is alone, without certainty and comfort, she often seeks the next best thing. But never does she take, never does she consume like her mother did with her, and tried with her siblings. This night, it is not out of longing but terror, that Nell seeks her brother, Luke.

  

She arrives in a car, Theo’s, and she is sure to hide herself. She places her translucent frame within the car seats, and can see two things at once. Her beautiful sister, Theo, still as alluring and gorgeous as before, and her sweet twin brother, Luke.

  

He focuses onto the road, lazy big eyes glooming at the world in front. At times, she still sees the glasses on his face, that same tilted upward glance to support the invisible frame on the bridge of his nose. Only now, not so much; he has a perfect, capable posture. It’s for certain, he is properly, completely sober.  He is awake; attentive -- and it has been so long since she had seen him this way, since she could compliment him on anything like this, she has to refrain herself from reaching out and hugging his figure.

  

“How long?” Theo asks.

 

But the vision comes to Nell again, like a hot straightening iron pushing down onto her chest. The red room. And she knows, she must warn them.

  

“GPS has the time estimated to be another half hour.” Luke explains.

 

Trish drops her shoulders, her fingers creeping toward Theo’s gloves.

  

“Are you okay?” Trish questions her fiancée. Theo blinks twice, slips off her gloves with her lips clamped tightly shut; it’s done so for Trish to see, Nell recognises.  As if her bareness can be a version of reassurance.

 

Pressed for time, Nell fiddles with the radio station as discretely as possible, and carefully selects a song. As soon as it plays, she is relieved at the instant recognition prevailing on Theo’s face. Only, Theo has paled drastically, and she appears frightened more than anything. Nell becomes doubtful.

 

The lyrics of cold-hearted fill the car. Trish instantly smiles. “Oh, this! When I was little, I used to dance to the music video whenever I had the chance.”

  

There’s a brief break in the conversing.

 

“Really?” Theo’s voice wavers after. Luke regards their sister through the rear view mirror then, as though also aware of the song’s significance.

 

Trish nods positively. “To my mom’s dismay.”

 

Neither sibling show any sign of responding, and Nell worries her warning isn’t good enough, that it won’t stick the landing with either of her siblings.

  

“Do you not like it? We can change it… Theo? Are you sure --” Trish starts, but Theo is quick to interrupt.

  

“No. No. It-It’s fine. Keep it.”

 

But Trish does not take to her fiancée’s words, and if anyone knows Theo like all three of them do, no one would. “…Remember how we talked about walls… and things that make us uncomfortable.”

 

After deep consideration implied by a thorough, gaping silence, Theo nods. “You’re right. Let’s change it.”

  

Theo unbuckles her seatbelt, and leans over the centre console. Her body sways subtly with the movements of the car. Trish immediately bristles, jumping to the edge of her seat.

 

“Woah-- Luke can --“

  

Theo grasps onto the knob of the entertainment system, but abruptly jerks away before she can make any adjustment. Her elbow knocks against the car seat, loud, as she falls back and her hand begins to shake. Theo cries out softly. 

 

Without hesitation, Trish releases her seatbelt, and crawls after Theo who’s retreating to the far-right corner of the car.

 

“Is she okay?” Luke asks worriedly. His eyes are suddenly that familiar big and round behind those thick beer-bottle glasses, and Nell senses his anxiety like a smell; strong and potent.

 

There are tears streaming down Theo’s cheeks.

 

“Fuck! That hurt! It burnt me. Oh god, it–it… It burnt my hand!”

 

“Le-Let me see.” Trish’s tone lowers, and darkens. She sounds gravely serious, and terrified at the same time.

 

“Put your seatbelts on!”  Luke yells at them, his eyebrows are so drawn together they almost make one line. “Put her seatbelt on! I won’t drive if…”

 

Trish reaches over Theo and gently pulls across the seatbelt around her.  It clicks into place, and Nell feels if only fleetingly, unsure of what she should do. She feels at a loss with herself, and puzzled as to what Theo had felt or seen. Was it her? Did Nelly hurt her own sister?

 

“I think we need to pull over.” Trish motions at Luke, her other hand cradling Theo’s face which is awash with tears. Her sister looks inconsolable.

 

“Is it bad?” Nell’s twin brother asks.

 

“I-I can’t see anything, but…”

 

Theo whimpers, and Luke’s grip tightens around the steering wheel. Nell watches as his knuckles turn from purple to white.

  

“Ok, I’m- I’m pulling over.” He stammers.

 

No. No. This isn’t what's supposed to happen. Nell ghosts herself next to Luke.

 

“Luke.” She says, but her brother is focused intently on the right-side mirror. He checks for traffic, and begins drifting across to the emergency lane.

 

Nell reaches forward, feeling like she did for the longest time, totally invisible.

  

BEEEEEP. SCREECH.

 

Nell immediately pulls away.

 

An out of control station wagon drives haphazardly in the emergency lane. Luke curses, pure fear manifesting itself onto his face. He swerves. A family with five children is seated inside the car. It’s their father that’s driving, Hugh Crain, Nell realises, and the children… it’s them from that fateful last night. Hard and with brute force, the station wagon careens into Theo’s Jeep, and there’s no time for Luke to dodge. They’re sent flying into the air. The Jeep somersaults; glass and metal shattering upon collision.

  

Nell is thrown out of the vehicle, and she watches in despair as the car spins on its roof, careering toward the metal railings stood along the highway. The station wagon is suddenly nowhere to be seen, but its presence still seems lingering, hovering.

  

As Nell turns around to stumble across a broken body next to her, she is overcome with emotion she doesn’t think is possible in death.

  

No. She tells herself. No. No. No. Her hands are a dark vein-blue, her fingernails are so long and unclipped; they are claws. She claws at her chest. To breathe. To be alive again. To be beside herself once more. On her knees, she recognises the connect of her skin to the asphalt road, as if she is solid. Is this real? Can it be real? Can it, if she supposedly isn’t?

  

And just as quickly as she had convinced herself, that maybe she is back again, that maybe she is tangible, she falls through the ground beneath her. Nell tumbles. Drops. Pulled down until she is back in Hill House. Until it takes her again.

  

No.

 

...

 

 

_Resist... even if you should fail._

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the cliffhanger! It's okay though, I'll update soon because I'm just that reliable (Hehehe -- only kidding).
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Nothing Bad Happens To Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter, because Steve and Luke have a lot of feelings. Unsurprising, really.
> 
> Also, some flashbacks. YESSS!!!!
> 
>  
> 
> Warning:
> 
> Graphic imagery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RECAP OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS 1-2
> 
> \- Luke paints the Blood Moon  
> \- Theo recognises the place that it comes from (emotionally)  
> \- Both leave to pick up Trish (they're going to Kevin's mother's viewing -- to Shirley's funeral home)  
> \- They're driving from somewhere near Amherst  
> \- It's been two days since the events of hill house for Nelly, but two years for the rest of the siblings (time is confetti)  
> \- Nell (a ghost) sees something terrible in the red room -- through the back window, is a blood moon.  
> \- Nell tries to warn Luke and Theo by playing the song cold-hearted on the radio (Theo used to dance to this song in the red room)  
> \- It backfires -- Theo touches the radio, and it burns her hand  
> \- Luke tries to pull over the car, but Hugh Crain and the siblings' younger selves from that last fateful night in Hill House (the night Olivia died) crash into them -- with their car obvs  
> \- Nell sees a broken body  
> \- Nell is forced to return back to Hill House

STEVEN’S P.O.V

 

In. Out. In. Out.

 

His reign over the keyboard shifts like the rise and fall of a chest’s inhale and exhale, like staggered breaths. And it’s fast tonight as if an anxiety attack has been set upon him. Desperate and eager, the muscles in his fingers lock up. They tremble and spasm.  His neck and jaw are stiff and tight, barely screwed on at the hinges. And as he types, there are times he misses, and times he is exact, precise. But his pauses -- when no keys are tapped -- are far and few in between.

 

He suspects it’s the self-hate, the self-loathing, and the pride, that renders him so ineffectual. He stares at the words blinking on the screen of his laptop. On. Off. He adjusts the brightness. Up. Down. It doesn’t change what’s written though. It doesn’t change the story.

 

No matter how many different ways he looks at his family’s past, no matter how hard he tries to make things better, the crumples in the sheet of his life, never straighten out. And they don’t straighten out for his siblings either. Protector. That’s who he’s been trying to be. That’s who he should be. Meant to be. But he isn’t. He isn’t. For the longest time, he believed it was something he had been good at, but now he is certain that was never the case. Steve is certain.

 

Leigh sneaks up behind him, he knows, because he hears her footsteps loud, and clear, as if they’re the only thing he can concentrate on.

 

“Steve.”

 

He turns around in his chair, plucks off his glasses. His eyes drift downward, and stay at her stomach. She’s no longer pregnant, but he remembers baby Olivia there, and the fear he felt. The fear that he wouldn’t be enough. That if his ghosts don’t, he would fuck up his daughter somehow.

 

Baby Olivia -- sweet, precious Olive is now one year old, almost two. And she is perfect. Untouched. Pure. No ghosts. No hauntings for her. Thank Christ.

 

“Stuck?” Leigh asks.

 

Steve shakes his head, stands up from his desk and approaches his wife. He brushes a few strands of hair behind her ears. So very vigilant.

 

“I’m not very good at this.” He says slowly, eyes searching for the comfort he’s sure rests in Leigh’s patient, considerate face -- not tired beyond years like his.

 

“At writing?”

 

“At seeing. Knowing what’s right or wrong.”

 

Leigh picks up his hand in hers. Her grip is gentle, relaxed, almost a little too relaxed. “Well that’s what the editors are for. And me. You know I love to read your work.”

 

Steve thinks of the misery his short absence in Olive’s life might bring, and more generally, what that has brought for him. Even now, he misses his Mom. He’s not afraid to admit that anymore. “Maybe going away wasn’t a good idea.”

 

“Going on a short vacation to Havana, Cuba? But, Steve it’s been wonderful. You can’t deny that these past few days have been really good for us.”

 

“And Olive—“

 

“We’ll be home soon. Tomorrow in fact. We’re done with the packing so… just a flight. One flight, and we’re home.”

 

Steve sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He catches the falter in his wife’s solemn face moments after. Leigh breaks into a smile.

 

“What?”

 

“Or, we could just go now. I miss her too, and our little family, and I just -- I know this has been great for your research, but I can also tell that this trip sort of expired yesterday on us. So… I may have taken the liberty of changing our flight plan.”

 

“Leigh.” Steve feels the grin on his face before he fully understands it. At times, his happiness arrives unannounced, and ill-informed, and he attributes this to Leigh. Because she is unimaginably beautiful, because she is the sun really, on a fanciful, blue day.

 

“Well, are you going to tell Shirley the good news or not?”

 

Steve wants his shades, and a good splash of sunscreen. He wants to bathe in her light.

 

“That we’ll be early to Kevin’s mother’s wake?” He proffers.

 

Leigh, laughing, swings her arms around his neck, that her chin comes to rest on his collarbone. He gazes at her melon-green eyes, and he doesn’t think he should have ever tried leaving her. She kisses the hair-fuzz on his neck. He should also probably shave.

 

“Don’t you have a way with words.” His wife murmurs into his skin. He nods fiercely, cupping her face. Steve whispers into her ear then, long and very specific, and Leigh retreats to their bedroom for their toiletries.

 

He turns away to pick up his phone, and dials Shirley’s number which has been committed to memory.

 

“Steve.” Leigh says suddenly, not having really disappeared down the hallway for their stuff just yet.

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Her name. It’s Lucille Harris.” She refers to Kevin’s mother, and he is glad for the reminder. The last thing he needs, is to unintentionally slight Shirley.

 

“Right.” Steve nods.

 

The phone rings, and it doesn’t take long for Shirley to pick up. She sounds breathless over the speaker, as they discuss how Olive is fairing in the Harris household. After a mutual silence, where neither supposedly wants to say goodbye just yet, Steve is sure to send his condolences to Kevin.

 

It never gets easy, she says something along the lines of -- and that statement, for some quaint reason resonates with Steve on a level, he probably won’t care to deny anymore. He is rendered silent by the consuming thought, and Shirley, is left to her own devices of conversation that always seem to consist of a long list of accusations. He hears jabs at the florist, the food caterers and a delivery truck. He hears about other trivial altercations with Jayden’s teachers at school also. But never does she mention anything of true importance, like Aunt Janet’s losing battle with dementia for instance, which, has only come to light a few days ago. Foolishly, both Theo and Luke have been left unaware of this development per Aunt Janet’s wishes, but that won’t be for long.

 

And still, it is all very typically Crain to have such sticky, enduring complications that Steve bristles.

 

“Steve?” Shirley calls through the phone.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Don’t be late.”

 

It’s the relapse that’s most concerning, Steve thinks to himself guiltily then. That Shirley is acting particularly perfectionistic, and Luke’s been avoiding talking about his art deceptively, and Theo hasn’t called him in weeks, and that he just wants to spit out another novel regardless of the moral grounds. It’s all really concerning. Steve just wants to finish it. He just wants to not care. He just wants to forget. But he knows what forgetting has done in the past, he knows what discrediting, and discounting can do to a person. And he feels as though, he is at a crossroads. That every choice he is going to make is going to be the wrong one. That maybe, there’ll never be the right turn for him.

 

All he knows is, it’s goddamn terrifying.

 

 

…

 

LUKE’S P.O.V

 

**(Flashback)**

 

His older brother stands in the kitchen, arms crossed, legs spread apart. It’s just this year that Steve has apparently shot up and thickened. The muscles, Luke finds himself envying the most, and the height especially, looms –- what he would do to be that tall and fit straight away. But Steve is eighteen and Luke is ten, and it will likely be another eight long years before anything significant and life-altering shows up in his own scrawny stature.

 

“Luke.” Steve says.

 

Only, Luke is overcome by the alarming thought that he might even be a late bloomer. Theo has talked to him about it extensively on the subject. Apparently, she has her worries too. Shirley and Steve have always been quite early to the scene, all to Aunt Janet’s dismay of course.

 

“You can’t be eating my protein bars.” Steve admonishes.

 

“I’m gonna be taller than you one day.” Luke hits back with heavy bravado, pushing his glasses further up on his nose. One more year, and he’ll be done with them, he thinks happily. Finally. If only their Mom could be here to see this. What a man he is becoming.

 

“You’re too ambitious for your own good. Shirley really isn’t a good example.” Steve imparts, slightly pompous, an attribute that he can never seem to be rid. But Luke knows, it’s just an exterior.

 

“And you aren’t?”

 

“Take a lesson from Theo.” Steve suggests. “She’s the one with the good grades in all her classes. That, will take you places. Shirley on the other hand, mostly has her eyes set on one thing. And I – well, it isn’t your responsibility to become a builder like Dad was. It’s mine. I’m the oldest and… I’m going to do a better job than Dad did.”

 

“Are you going to build the forever house?” Luke pulls out a stool from the counter. He climbs up on it, still too big for him. Too tall. The leather seat is however warm, and he sits down comfortably.

 

Steve nods. “I’ve been working out and I’ve applied for an apprenticeship, so yeah, as soon I get my certificate and the experience I need, I will.”

 

“But Aunt Janet told me you were going to do writing?”

 

Steve’s nose crinkles. “Writing?”

 

“You keep a journal, don’t you? Shirl told me you have all A’s in English.”

 

“No, I’m going to build the forever house.”  Steve persists.

 

“What if I want to do that too?” Luke asks.

 

“You have to be really physically strong. You might even get hurt.”

 

“So?”

 

“What about becoming an artist? That’s cool.” Steve peers down at the fruit bowl on the counter. He selects an apple.

 

“I love art. But you love writing… and you don’t want that job.”

 

“Luke.” Steve sighs, peeling off the sticker. “I can’t be a writer because I can only write about one thing. It’ll be one book, and my career will be over.”

 

“Career? What is a career?”

 

Steve ignores the question. “When you’re much older, you’ll understand. Just be glad you won’t have to work out like I do. One of these days, I might just be able to wrench the door off from a car.”

 

“Only superman can do that.” Luke debunks, sceptical.

 

 

**(Present)**

 

“Luke.”

 

He hears a voice calling his name, that seems to echo for miles and miles… just really loud in an abyss of bleak, foreign darkness. But there is a fog, a blanket of sleep that has been pulled over him, and he cannot move.

 

“Luke.” It says again.

 

He fights the darkness, the shadows at the edge of his vision, the weight pressing onto his chest. He fights.

 

“Luke.”

 

Legs, kicked out, and arms, flailing mid-struggle -- Luke manages to blink an eye open; the eyelid heavy and stinging. He sees the glass first, the windscreen shattered, then the buckled roof jutting out near the base of his head.

 

It takes him a few minutes to realise he is upside down. All the blood has rushed to his hairline, and his chin hurts, and he is sure it has been busted open, the blood pooling around his eyes.

 

“Fuck.”

 

He still can’t open his other eye, and he supposes that he vaguely recalls hitting it on the steering wheel as they flipped over.

 

“Fuck.” Luke curses again, because he slowly begins to remember where he was going, and who he was with.

 

“Theo.” He wants to shout, but it’s incoherent and a mere whisper against the noise of a stormy day. Luke pulls at his seatbelt, fingers pushing on the button frantic as though he’s trying to eject himself off an imploding plane. It releases him easier than he thought it would, and he drops onto the roof of the car, his head bashing into the roof painfully, that he now suspects it’s bleeding quite heavily if it wasn’t already.

 

Rolling onto his knees, he crawls to the door, which apparently has been blown off in the accident. Luke tumbles out the side and stops at the gravel on the side of the road. As he pulls himself up slowly, his knees painfully stiff, he notices a body far ahead.

 

“Hey!” He yells, his voice is seemingly broken and splintered, and during a limp, he considers the possibility of there being glass embedded in his knees. Tiny shattered pieces of glass burrowed deep into the flesh. He shudders.

 

Luke nears the body, it’s twisted and bent at odd angles. There’s also a lot of blood spilling onto the asphalt, that he feels the nausea, and bile bubbling at his throat… the worry of exploding with sick.

 

When he sees -- finally sees -- as though seeing for the first time... he cannot fathom.

 

 

**(Flashback)**

 

“What if there’s no one… for me?” Theo is stretched luxuriously on her bed, the duvet and sheets, stripped off of her mattress. He doesn’t question her, only listens. It starts off innocently curious, until it is serious. Until, she is terribly grave; thirteen year old Theo withdrawing into a small, tiny hunched figure.

 

Luke puzzles; he is ten, but he is still unsure of many things. “What? You’re really pretty Theo. Everyone in my grade think so.”

 

Theo’s hands are bare; she holds them out for him to see. “I mean… I’m wrong. I’m the problem.”

 

“Problem?” Luke pulls himself onto Theo’s bed, legs dangling. Usually, she’d be the one to push him off, but not today. Today, she is kind; she is careful.

 

“I can’t – really be close to people.”

 

He shakes his head in disagreement, and he contemplates what Steve would say. Luke could do this too. He could be the stronger man. “There’s someone for everybody. I know that. Shirley’s found Kevin, and she’s a control freak.”

 

 Theo flops onto her back, rolls over onto her side. “Luke.” Her face is buried in a pillow.

 

“There’ll be someone for you. I’m a hundred percent certain. You’ll see. And I’ll get to be the best man at your wedding.”

 

Theo smiles through a grimace, propping herself up slowly. “I don’t think I can be the one who chooses that.”

 

“But you have to be, because you won’t turn out to be right. You will have ended up finding someone, so. That’s the deal. I get to be the best man.” Luke is proud of himself, he believes he has her, that he has done what big brother’s do. Perhaps he can practise this on Nelly.

 

“Then you have to make sure nothing bad happens to us. To me and my lover.”

 

“Bad?” Luke repeats. “Why would anything bad happen?”

 

Theo shrugs. “Mom and Dad. You just never know. Maybe I’ll become the bad thing. Or-or I’ll hurt them. “

 

“Aunt Janet says what happened to Mom was an accident.”

 

“Do you believe that?” Theo remains adamantly negative.

 

“It just won’t happen. The house is too far away.” He says this, firm and calm. Luke says this despite knowing the tall-man-ghost still follows him, despite knowing its presence still lingers, evil and malicious, shadowing his movements, stalking the hallways silent at night. But to protect, is to lie.

 

 

**(Present)**

 

“Trish.”

 

He is pushed onto his knees as if the grey sky has flourished its hand and pressed onto his shoulders. Down and hard. As if to buckle what should no longer be standing. That everything must properly be a crumpled, inconsolable, weeping mess in the face of such terror.

 

“Trish.”

 

Her mouth is open. Open for air, of course, but there can be none. Luke stares at her neck; he goggles and pours over at the long piece of glass lodged in her throat -- Trish’s wide-open eyes darting, saying things, and jaw quivering, probably saying things also. And there can be no air, because the blood is like lava erupting from the volcano of her mouth. Just a visual orchestration of gurgling choking noises, and thoughts signed with the writhing of her tongue against bloodied teeth.

 

“Nothing bad is going to happen.” Luke tells her.

 

“Nothing bad. Nothing… nothing bad… bad… nothing… I know.”

 

Trish is alive for the longest time, he considers. She is grabbing her throat. Then she is grabbing his. Luke feels her fingers digging into his skin, scratching and peeling, and he wants to give himself to her. He wants to offer her everything he can give, because there’s nothing that will compare to her pain. There’s nothing that will fix this, undo this.

 

“Please.” He begs. “Please. Please. Please. Please.”

 

And wickedly, God decides that someone’s time is finally up. That the suffering inside of her body has only now tired itself, and her building voice should be muted just now before its realisation. She stops, all so unexpectedly. Right when Luke believes, she’ll get her gift, she’ll get everything he wants to offer her, Trish blinks. Once. Twice.

 

“Don’t let it be bad. Do-Don’t.”

 

But she does. She lets it so. The third time, her eyes are closed, her arms are rested tangled ropes on her abdomen, her chest freezes. A corpse on the road. A corpse in front of him. Somehow, he has borne witness of the before to the now. Somehow, he is Trish’s last spectator.

 

He cries, until he doesn’t. Until he is empty of grief, and guilt.

 

And, Luke is on his feet again; he rounds Theo’s Jeep. He arrives at the right side wearily, but feeling inexplicably strong at the same time. The beating of his heart, knocks hard and powerful against his ribs, registering in his ears, merely stable. And he knows his ears are bleeding, he feels them trickle with wet oozing richness. It could be tinnitus, the ringing, the pounding, but the strength he feels otherwise is contrary.

 

He wraps his hands around the edges of the door, which is dented and misshapen, and pulls. He tugs with all his might.

 

He hadn’t heard it before, but a passer-by car must have pulled up at the crash scene.  A middle-aged man steps out of a red sedan onto the gravel.

 

“Sir – “

 

“Call… help!” It’s the only words Luke can manage before his back is being fully applied to wrenching the door off the car. Again, and again. A voice inside of his head chastises him, _you can’t, you won’t, only super man can, only he can_. Luke sees unconscious Theo through the window though, it’s all he needs.

 

The Good Samaritan passer-by ends his call on the phone with the emergency services then, and steps closer to the scene of the accident. But he maintains his distance; Luke notices this mid-struggle with the car door.

 

“Sir, you need to step away from the vehicle.”

 

No. He will not be stepping away. Luke continues trying the door. But then with uncontrollable anger, because he does not really care for anything else anymore, he smashes his fist through the window and attempts to get Theo out, arms at the mercy of dozens of glass shards. But his sister is restrained by her seatbelt, and he cannot reach down to free her.

 

“Sir, your car is leaking gas.”

 

The man’s warning is left ignored.

 

“Theo!” He yells, voice quivering like a bird in turbulent flight. “Theo!”

 

“Sir, I’ve called for – “

 

“Help me, go – god – fuck.” Luke pummels at the door, frustrated, exhausted and tired. But he will not give up. Thump. Thump. His knuckles bleed. His hands hurt.

 

The middle-aged man stands back frozen, unwilling to brave the potential of an explosion.

 

And Luke goes at the door another time. He twists at the handles, jerking them, prises at the hinges, yanking forcefully in quick succession. He lets out a roar, and then another one, when he finally feels something give, and the door swings open.

 

“Theo.” He cries, unbuckling her seatbelt frenziedly. She collapses into his arms, heavy and limp. Luke yells, tears in his eyes, saliva drooling down his chin with the effort, with the relief.

 

“Help!”

 

It’s only then that the Good Samaritan springs into motion. He hurries over to Luke, and together they pull Theo out of the wreckage. There isn’t time for Luke to examine his sister’s condition or to really shake her awake, all he does is put one foot in front of the other, and count.

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

 

Bang.  

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all aren't too sad...


	4. All of Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley deals with the shocking news of the accident, and Olivia is confronted by Nell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would've been the longest chapter yet, but I've decided to split this chapter in two. 
> 
> I apologise for the long wait :(

SHIRLEY’S P.O.V

 

 

She can’t blink. Her eyes are fixed open, and the bleariness of staring in one place for so long, is indescribably disorienting.

 

“Shirl.”

 

She takes a breath, that isn’t as hitched nor broken as the previous million she has taken. It is long and deep, because it’s been minutes since she last properly tasted oxygen. Or understandably, it’s been even longer than that.

 

“Who was that?”

 

The phone slips from her hand. She allows it to clatter onto the ground, and punctuate Jayden’s shy arrival in her peripheral; he ushers his sister, Allie, upstairs and away. Her son is so grown. So grown up. But her… Shirley feels so terribly small. All of the sudden, nothing but a tiny, dumb child.

 

“Dumb.” She says, shocked.

 

“What happened?” Kevin approaches her slowly, and he isn’t ostensibly afraid to pull her towards him, to break her out of her own reverie. An embrace to remove his wife from herself – God knows she’s a pitiful creature of wallowing.

 

Shirley wipes her eyes. She crosses the room to the nearest tissue box, and a tissue at a time, permits a passing attempt to dry the unending flow of tears streaming down her cheeks. _I’m okay. I’m okay_. It takes a couple tries of convincing before she is capable of facing her husband. Just only that. The rest of her act is fundamentally a collection of brief, clustered breakdowns -- from the way she is trembling, to the way her feet are itching, and her face is burning.

 

“The-there’s b-b… an accident?” It escapes her like a question, like a terrible imitation of cold, cold disbelief.

 

Kevin scarcely looks back at her, unmoving. The image of her, she can only presume, is a little too much.

 

“And there’s a… b-b-body. The-they need me to…to…” She can’t keep going, because her own body is caving in as if she’s about to suddenly collapse, and really, she’s about to throw up also. She’s on the verge of spewing her guts out all over the floor.

 

“Shirley.”

 

“I know your Mom… Lucille… I know… I’m sorry… but I-I…” Her stomach somersaults, twists, and turns on itself.  She feels the bile rising up in her throat. She feels the guilt, the torment of having to choose between her husband and her siblings. And somehow, neither seem like a good option. But only one is forgivable.

 

“It’s okay.“ He tells her kindly.

 

Shirley bristles with the self-criticism. “I have to go. Kevin, I have to.” She is nodding, and to her own dismay, he is too. He has come to rest his sympathies on the bed of her shame.

 

“It’s okay. I’ll take care of everything.” He assures gently.

 

She can’t even bring herself to say ‘thank you’ to her husband, but Shirley sends him a perfectly enveloped look that is profoundly known to the both of them -- that borders on subjects neither will likely ever talk about -- before she forces her body to pass the front doors.

 

She crosses the front lawn keenly not long after -- hands turned to fists, blood turned to ice. And she wants to yell, scold, and chastise, maybe.

 

With a huge amount of effort, because she is largely unwilling to do anything, she faces the night sky, vindictive, and half expects to be able to trace the blood moon she’s been dreaming about with the memory of her eyes. But the moon is a bright whiteness on this treacherous night. It is a normal, hopeful gaze at a time that should be so angry, so wrathful and a sheer red. So, as she lowers herself into Kevin’s car, with an aggression the world should honestly be assuming, she adjusts her rear-view mirror to reflect back the white circle behind her. And as she drives away, for the most part, it is all she watches -- it’s unfailing glow in moments Shirley recalls her own failings over and over. This perpetual broken record, with no true remorse, no real relent; a condescending, superficial lie playing out to no end.

 

A lie. That’s the life she has been hoping to live.

 

*

 

It turns out, the trip to Amherst Hospital is exceptionally shorter than the many forevers it feels like actually transpired. In Shirley’s mind, she had died and rebirthed more than a dozen times before she properly located the facility, but that must have been an illusion. A vast misconception of the truth. And similarly, by mere definition as it were, she’d been expecting the hospital to be a somewhat capricious, ghoulish-looking building especially considering its location, but it reveals itself to her as a modern find. It establishes perhaps the only contemporary existence to be known in this small suburban town -- not that such a horrid place of illness and death could be anything but what it ardently suggests.

 

Shirley enters through the emergency department, numb and detached, or otherwise thoroughly uprooted from her sane state of being. The reception desk by triage are hosted by three clerks, all of whom, stay pre-occupied on the phone. Aloofness, nothing unnerves her more.

 

“Please.” She confides in the clerk woman nearest to her, and whilst doing so, fights the down-turning pull at her lips, and the severe anguish blistering beneath her skin. It’s a losing battle. Her fingers tap on the desk demandingly then, missing the bell on several occasions when she tires of being blatantly ignored.  “I’m here for my –“

 

“Shirley.” She whips around at that very second, unexpectedly tethered to the familiar voice -- which drifts in and out of her ear like a bell’s soft clanging -- and discovers Luke, in all his muted and swiftly dwindling glory, standing rough-housed by the sliding doors.  He’s hunched at the front entrance as if he’s staring down the barrel of a gun. Her gun.

 

To take him in then, would be a painful act of responsibility. But it is a duty, in spite of the history there, she still can never bring herself to abandon. She watches her brother cradle a hand to his chest, and the graphic, forth-coming stiches running along his chin --  the sticky, dark, thickening blood streaked on his clothes and hair. And as she sees a deeply frightened boy drowning under a sea of red, Shirley’s finds herself unable to resist the beckoning of his cries. Like always, she cannot ignore his cries.

 

“Luke.”

 

Stiltedly, he follows her all-too-possessive lead into a hard embrace, where she becomes quickly acquainted with every bone in his fragile body at the mercy of her grip. And she wants to tighten it -- her hold on Luke, and never lever let him go. Never let him set foot outside again. Never let him leave.

 

“Jesus.” She says into his T-shirt that’s singed with blackened ash, that smells like hellfire because she has always been biblical that way. “Why aren’t you with a doctor?”

 

She pulls back apprehensively, but her hard-scanning gaze doesn’t really truly leave his trembling body. No. Of course not.

 

“They already… The think my hand might be broken, and–and–and I can’t hear from one ear… it-it’s like… they said it’s not permanent, but I-I don’t know… and my knee… there was… glass -- my head is fine though… it’s fine.” Luke stammers through his thoughts, too typically for comfort.

 

“Should you be sitting?” Shirley, though, isn’t feeling quite patient enough to gentle her way through her brother’s distress. “Luke?” … because Shirley wants to know first.

 

“It’s true… What I saw was real. I’m not making it up.” Luke murmurs in response.

 

“Tell me.” She approaches her brother fiercely determined, and tugs on his collar to focus him. To command his attention. “Who is it? The body? I need to know.”

 

Luke meets her eyes, but with a disposition so fearful and afraid, Shirley’s knees almost buckle. She stumbles backward before he can say a word; jerks away as if in reproach, because the implication in itself -- what he has implied just then -- is enough. No need for any other mode of communication.

 

“Oh no.” She chokes, unable to help the gasp passing her lips.  “Oh, not again.” Shirley thinks of her little sister, Nell, lying ten feet underground, thinks of button-loving Nell in Hill House. “What is this? What the fuck…” Another sister taken away.

 

Shirley staggers to the nearest wall for support, her back flush against the hard brick, and anticipates the dizziness of her world breaking. Slow, but then, very quick. She rubs her temples to stifle the build-up, the buzz of the hysteria resulting, and yet, there’s a part of her that cannot respond to anything. A part of her that is a lifeless, phantom limb to lug around. For many reasons, she doesn’t believe she will ever be well again.

 

“Are y –“ Luke shudders into the wake of his deep voice. It reminds Shirley of when her little brother had first begun growing into his adult one. Scary.

 

“Why–why would you think that? How could you be thinking that?” He accuses her, an angriness peeking through the veil of confusion he wears. He points his finger at her belittlingly, as if to say, _why would you think Theo first?_

 

Shirley looks to her brother initially inconsolable, but soon the tears are rendered stagnant upon the realisation that follows. “It’s Trish?”

 

Luke blinks at the drop of her question, he repeats the action about a hundred times afterwards. Still, it’s not quite enough to erase the painful truth.

 

Truth. She doesn’t expect it will hurt as much, knowing a truth for certain, but she breaks into another sob regardless, as if her own body had already made up its mind when it picked up the damn phone. That yes, she was going to fall apart at the seams, collapse into ruin, no matter what. Fate had this written down somewhere.

 

Trish is dead.

 

“Theo?” She asks quietly after, turning away to combat her tears in private. She stabilises herself against the wall a second time. To accept all this, she will need to see her sister. Shirley knows this much.

 

Luke pales, attempts to briefly pace in the waiting room, but soon resolves to standing just as still as possible. “They-They’re working on her. I-I don’t… know. They won’t tell me anything. I-I…”

 

“I’ll ask the doctor.” She works up what little courage is left to make her decision, to take the initiative. She can do that, at the very least.

 

Luke, though, remains in his own little world. “I-I wasn’t high. I didn’t take drugs. I swear. We were safe. We-we…”

 

“Luke.” She warns. Contrary to her efforts, Shirley can feel herself abruptly boiling, as if he’s really becoming the thing to anger her, the thing to blame. But she knows she cannot feed that instinct, not anymore. Boundaries, Theo once said, but her sister had been wrong.

 

“It was an accident.” Shirley assures Luke, but then also to secondly, dispel her own doubts floating around in her head, which are like life rings in an ocean of her brother’s make-belief stories.

 

To really love Luke, she has recently come to know, is to suspend all disbelief, to drown in the very ocean she has tried to float upon.

 

It’s a self-sacrifice.

 

…

 

OLIVIA’S P.O.V

 

 

Her husband’s fingers are laced with her own. It’s a stroll through the hallways neither one seem to tire of, and it might be attributed to the fact that they’re properly together for once. Connection. Despite their transgressions, and their ghostly presence on earth, she can still register the warmth of Hugh’s touch. She has been granted that much. And strangely, it is not God she must thank, but the curious affliction of Hill House; that it has not denied her what she cannot do without. Who would have known?

 

BOOM!

 

The front doors swing open suddenly, and Nell is tossed onto the red-carpet at the entrance of the house. Above Nell, the grand chandelier softly tinkers and sways with the force of her arrival.  Ominous sounds of old age, creaking and groaning, then take the opportunity to show itself, and reverberate through the wood and stone walls.

 

Immediately, Hugh separates himself from Olivia, as though the peel strung off a banana, and rushes to their daughter’s side. Olivia is silent in her regard of the unfolding situation, perhaps barely recognising the cause of Nell’s deathly pale face, but she isn’t totally sure, not yet.

 

“Is everything alright?” Olivia asks, ashamedly deceptive.

 

Nell can’t quite speak. She looks like she did when Olivia had the vision of her children in the morgue. A wire expertly weaved around her daughter’s teeth, clamping the jaw shut, mutilating the voice, and the impending scream to come. Olivia had hoped she would never have to see that again, and yet…

 

“What’s wrong?” Hugh grasps his daughters hand. And they all watch as the ghost of adult Nell shrinks into the six-year-old child version of her. It is a common occurrence that when Nell is vulnerable her form shifts into her younger self.

 

“Y-you.” Nell tearfully accuses; her daughter turns her innocent head to confront Olivia with a glower. A glower that is so full of intention and dread, Olivia feels as though she might cower.

 

“What’s going on?” Hugh looks between Nell and Olivia, and supposedly by mere intuition, stays at his wife. Because her composure is faltering, the muscles on her face are twitching, and her lips are trembling. And she cannot any longer deny them the falsehood of the red room.

 

“I love them. I-I love my children. All of them.” She attempts to firstly, convince her family of the very place her heart lies.

 

But it won’t be enough.

 

Hugh’s face drops like Olivia has never seen it do before… and all the times she had told her husband she could open the door… every reassurance she gave him… Olivia now unexpectedly sees the repercussion of such lies reflect in the deep blue of Hugh’s irises.

 

She sees in them, the angry, searing flash of betrayal.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right now there are a lot of loose ends, set-ups and cliff hangers, but I promise there'll be some answers soon. So hang in there.
> 
> Also, many flashbacks to come :)

**Author's Note:**

> I'd be so grateful to hear your lovely thoughts and opinions about the story down below <3


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